At last...

A pair of Grey Partridge flushed from the 'borage field' this morning was a long overdue and anticipated year tick. With Mark Brandon's Willow Warbler on Saturday, The Lodge list moves on to 104. And in the challenge within a challenge (Moran v Oakley-Martin) my personal Lodge year list goes to 92.

Happy couples

A quick drive down the Nunnery Lakes track this morning (on my way back from following up a report of a Great Bustard for the third time this week... still not lucky though!) produced a couple of decent sightings. A pair of Shovelers on D Lake were my first of the year on the reserve; not exactly cooperative but I managed the archetypal record shot of the male:

A pair of Grey Partridges, my first on (rather than from) the reserve, were equally uncooperative, though I did manage a couple of 'action shots' through the windscreen, to help The Lodgers work out what this species looks like ;)

Having texted Neil about the Shoveler (he's new to this Lakes listing lark, you see), I thought I'd go home for a nice, relaxing breakfast...

Can I have a P. please, Bob?

Actually that should read "Can I have a P. please, Chris?" as BTO Reserve Manager Chris Gregory has come up trumps again, this time with 2 Grey Partridge (BTO 2-letter code = P.) heard calling from farmland adjacent to the reserve at dusk today.

Grey Partridge is still reasonably well distributed in the Brecks, albeit at low density... and our neighbouring estate managers swear blind that they don't stock 'English partridge'! Had we had to wait until autumn (I saw 39 !! the day before a big shoot in early October last year) this might have been a dodgy tick but a pair in late winter/early spring is as good as they come!

That pushes the list to 'two fat ladies' - if I'm still allowed to use that bingo call?! - and makes up for me wasting the best part of two hours failing to relocate the 'interesting' white-faced redpoll with clean UTCs that I found yesterday ;-)